Translated by Evgeniia Shabaeva and Diana D.
A political prisoner gets his jail mail and reads,
“Hey buddy! Been to the country, plucked the weeds, seen a cow— just wow— what an udder!
And you? What are you up to?”
His body takes off from a cliff, makes a flip.
Each cup wrapped in newspaper, packed in a rigid box (she was escaping, he, somersaulting from rocks), none arrives safe and solid.
Here’s your four soldi— exact fare, fair and square.
Translated by Evgeniia Shabaeva
Sister Cities
These are the laws of physics that even at high velocity motion can reverse, but time is irreversible. The aspens, the birches, and elms. I used to live in a city And now I live in another, its sister.
A sister city is a collective image, but it seems that there moved my whole region.
A paperback book, painkillers, ibuprofen, there also was a cat, but now it’s dead; water, snacks for the road. An angel on the building of the immigration service raised two wings in a semicircle.
Familiar letters in meaningless combinations, faceless intercity-ers.
The city is beautiful: a circus, a zoo, an ATM, international transactions, post office, currency exchange. Also, I had a brother, but not anymore (he’s alive, alive though)— only my nephew.
The nephew believes in “no to war,” and so he still calls, like before.
Mom walks her son, in the yard, they sell pattypans with orange skin. They lie there, posing— and the yard even looks like ours, if seen from the street.
In this park, it’s damp in the morning and somehow sleepy, on the bench, it’s written “Caution, freshly painted,” it seems.
Translated by Diana D.